


No Safety Nets

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Cunnilingus, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fight Sex, Fights, Friends With Benefits, Injury, ToT: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-24 07:18:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8362810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: The solo debriefing is weird, almost lonely. They have very different sorts of relationships with Merlin: he talks to Roxy like she's a work colleague, friendly but always a little bit distant. He's different with Eggsy, though it feels churlish to make a fuss about it, and she doesn't want to be stuck with any of that chummy you can talk to me, I'm here to listen sort of coddling nonsense anyway."You did well," Merlin concludes, closing the green mission file when they've fine-tooth-combed all the details. There's something hawkish about the way he stares sometimes, head cocked to the side, eyes piercing and bright, before he softens slightly and almost smiles. "Saved his life. What does that make it, three-one to you?""Two, if I'm fair," she concedes. "He would have got out of the Venice thing himself, I just helped finish the fight early.""Two, three," Merlin says vaguely, taking his glasses off to pinch and rub at the bridge of his nose the way he always does when he's tired. "You're a good team."Were, she wants to correct him, but there's a finality to that and she doesn't feel like facing it just yet.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



She feels like there's probably something in Kingsman's unwritten rules to say you're supposed to be all self-sacrificing, I wish I could take my comrade's place, I'd bring all your pain onto myself if I knew a way, brothers-in-arms type thing, but all Roxy's thinking as she grits her teeth and hauls Eggsy out of the smoking remains of the building she's just blown up is _thank fuck it's not me_. He screams every time she takes a step, the mangled mess of his leg and the ragged gash in his side catching on the rubble as she drags him away from the bloody, smoky stench of the fire, and beneath it the sweet barbecue aroma of corpses roasting. Her stomach rumbles noisily, almost painfully. Bit horrifying, but they've not eaten in hours and biology is what it is.

" _No_ ," Eggsy keeps begging between the wordless, desperate yells of pain, "please, don't, please, I can't—"

"Of course you can. Almost there."

"Rox, no, I can't, please, I—"

"This roof is about to collapse. I'll get you out, or I will leave you here. Choose."

He goes quiet then, eyes rolling back in his smudged sooty face as he passes out, and Roxy chews her lip bloody, fights the screaming muscles in her back and arms to haul him to safety in time. They leave a long smear of gore behind them. Good thing all the enemy are dead and can't follow it.

* * *

The solo debriefing is weird, almost lonely. They have very different sorts of relationships with Merlin: he talks to Roxy like she's a work colleague, friendly but always a little bit distant. He's different with Eggsy, though it feels churlish to make a fuss about it, and she doesn't want to be stuck with any of that chummy _you can talk to me, I'm here to listen_ sort of coddling nonsense anyway.

"You did well," Merlin concludes, closing the green mission file when they've fine-tooth-combed all the details. There's something hawkish about the way he stares sometimes, head cocked to the side, eyes piercing and bright, before he softens slightly and almost smiles. "Saved his life. What does that make it, three-one to you?"

"Two, if I'm fair," she concedes. "He would have got out of the Venice thing himself, I just helped finish the fight early."

"Two, three," Merlin says vaguely, taking his glasses off to pinch and rub at the bridge of his nose the way he always does when he's tired. "You're a good team."

 _Were_ , she wants to correct him, but there's a finality to that and she doesn't feel like facing it just yet.

* * *

Venice was the first time they fucked, flying high on adrenaline and success as soon as they were back in the hotel room. She could feel his eyes on her in the lift like stroking fingers, a thrumming tension in the air between them that had never been there before. She took the eleven floors to think about it and decided there were more pros than cons to the idea, plus after the Swedish princess debacle she was pleased Eggsy seemed to be waiting for her to make a move and not going in for a grope like she was a prize he deserved for being handsome and good at kicking terrorists in the head. He made a beautiful little noise when she shoved him hard against the closing door, slamming it shut and twisting the lock and going up on tiptoe to kiss him fiercely all in a single movement. His hands, sticky with sweat and blood, went to her hips of her halo suit to hold her there against him, the stiffening line of his cock behind the flawlessly tailored suit trousers pressing insistently against her belly. It was quick that first time, no finesse, not even any undressing: just Roxy throwing Eggsy onto her bed and riding his thigh until she came like a starburst, feeding her dirty fingers to him to suck because she couldn't concentrate on kissing when she could feel him coming in pulses in his clothes right beneath her body.

"What the fuck've you done here?" was the first thing he said after, his arm around her shoulders and fingers travelling over the bumps of the braids she'd wound around her head and fastened down. He found a pin and tugged gently, sliding it out and searching for the next. "Used to seeing you with that ponytail thrashing about like a whip."

Eyeroll. "There's not a woman in the world who'd deliberately go into a dangerous situation wearing a ponytail someone can grab. Survival skills number one. We learn this stuff while you lot are blithely kicking footballs about in the park."

Eggsy made a considering sort of humming noise at that and kissed her gently on the temple, and silently he found the rest of the pins and began to unravel her plaits into sweaty, bloodstained rat tails. "Wanna share a shower?" he said eventually. "No offence but you fucking stink."

* * *

The second time they were sparring in the HQ gym, soaked with sweat and panting. He was _still_ pulling his punches with her and she was livid about it, fighting back with everything she had trying to goad him into landing one properly: a sharp kick to the side of his knee that he just managed to block in time, a dagger jab of her sharp knuckles in his ribs that made him blast a sweary gasp of pain, a hard blow with the heel of her hand that split his lower lip open on his teeth. He reeled back from that, spat blood onto the mat, raised his fists again in his blocking stance.

"You're not even trying," Roxy told him. How much her voice was shaking with rage made her even more angry – that she could barely control it around him. That he seemed to have a power over her that nobody else did, that she didn't agree to and never, ever would. "Do you have any idea how fucking patronising you're being?"

He lowered his fists a fraction, looked at her with his stupid stubborn handsome face, jaw clenched and eyes narrowed. "No, I just don't wanna hurt you."

"Do you really think anybody we're trying to take down is going to care about hurting me? Do you think I don't know I'm always going to be the first easy little target they go for when we're out together? You're _not helping me_ by making this easy."

He punched her so hard then she thought it might have smashed her cheekbone if she hadn't flung her head back just in time; as it was, the blow that glanced off the side of her face made her ear ring and pain bloom, hot and dull, down to her jaw and up to prickle her scalp. She used the momentum of her dodge to come up hard with a knee to his belly and a heavy punch aimed at his throat, which he blocked by grabbing her fist and twisting her arm almost to breaking point. _Yes_ , she yelled silently in her mind, _finally, yes, thank you_ , and hooked his legs out from under him with a sweep of her foot. Finally it was a fight, a real fight like the ones out on missions, and she wasn't winning – she gained on him, only for Eggsy to scramble to his feet and aim a sledgehammer of a thump at her chest. She twisted away, gained on him again, kicked him hard at a spot on his thigh to deaden his leg, and then her head rocketed back from a punch to the jaw that left bruise imprints of his knuckles there for days.

"Rox," Eggsy started to say, and she interrupted, "If you dare apologise I'll kick you so hard in the kidney you'll piss lava for a year."

"No, I wasn't"—another punch to her cheekbone that she didn't block in time and a kick to her stomach that she did—"just, you're always open this side. Watch it, yeah?"

"Right." He came at her again, attacking hard, and he was right that he was stronger than her but she was faster and that mattered just as much, dipping back to avoid another punch to the face, blocking, blocking, blocking, then she saw an opening and darted in to take it, using the ledge of his thigh in his bent-knee defence stance as a step to climb him and swing herself onto his back, throw her arm around his throat, and squeeze. He overbalanced and landed heavily on the mat, Roxy bracketing his neck with her knees and plunging her fingers into the sweaty scruff of his hair to tug him sideways. In a real fight this was the point where she'd break his neck. A moment ago she almost felt as though she wanted to.

Now...

She could feel the lurch and heave of his chest beneath her, the heaviness of his breath. Her own was burning in her lungs, whistling painfully in and out of her parched throat.

"You let me win," she accused, though with less venom than before because she wasn't sure this time whether it was true.

"No." He looked infuriatingly magnificent down there, like something from an old epic battle film, bruised and bloody with a pretty Technicolor flush printed on his cheekbones and a gleaming slick of sweat on his forehead. His eyes, glittering green, held hers for a moment and then travelled downwards. She could almost feel the trail of them like lingering, stroking fingertips touching the swelling of her cheek and jaw, down the soaking t-shirt she was wearing, over the blue boxer shorts and the bare tanned stretch of her thighs pressed like a necklace around his throat. "Swear down I tried like it was real. You won that one."

"Try like it's real every time."

"Alright."

"I mean it, Eggsy."

"Alright. I swear."

She started to move, intending to give him a hand up like a peace offering now he'd decided to treat her like a person who'd beat him in a spy job application again, but he murmured breathlessly, "I fucking wish you weren't wearing them shorts right now," and moving suddenly seemed like an absolutely terrible idea. She sat still, partly kneeling, partly letting herself settle back against his chest in a way that tilted her hips to his gaze and the wetness of his mouth when he swiped his tongue over his bleeding lip and craned his neck to kiss her right at the seam of her shorts.

"The gym is full of cameras," she reminded him, but still she tightened her grip on his hair and dragged him back, and it didn't matter in the end that he was tongueing her through two layers of fabric because she came so hard against his mouth and chin that she could feel the tremors of it pulsing through the bruises on her face.

* * *

Eggsy wakes for the first time since his injury while Roxy's on a mission in Sydney, then he's in and out for a bit as she's clearing up some trouble in Bogota. By the time she's done and due a week of break, he's almost back to normal.

"Apart from the leg," he says with a grimace when she mentions it.

"Could be worse. It's still attached. There was talk for a while about amputation." She leans over to grab the Sharpie from Eggsy's bedside table, chooses a prominent place on the plaster cast in between other people's signatures, and starts to draw.

"Yeah, well, who fucking knows what's gonna happen, could still go tits up yet. The doctor says we gotta see how the bone decides to heal, then – Rox, are you drawing a dick on my cast?"

"If I don't do it, Jamal or Ryan will." She starts inking in curly little lines for hair all over the balls and Eggsy groans into his hands. "Besides, it's not _a_ dick, it's _your_ dick."

"If I could move I'd kick you right in the fucking face." He dares a look between his fingers and scowls. "Fuck off, it don't bend _that_ much."

"Shut up or I'll draw warts on it."

That makes him laugh. He looks surprised by it – laughing's probably the last thing in the world he thought he'd be doing today – and he drops his hands away from his face, one coming to rest just at the front of his burgundy pyjama trousers. "You want me to get it out and you can draw from life?"

"Not particularly." But she signs her name with a flourish and abandons her seat, climbing awkwardly onto the bed and curling up against Eggsy's warm side, and she presses her nose against his neck to breathe him in – a clean, soapy, hospital sort of scent, some expensive shampoo he favours now, rather than the gritty, acrid odour of gunshots and blood she's become accustomed to any time she's in bed with him after a mission or a workout. It's never happened without the thrill of a job as an excuse before, and he seems no more able to figure out how to proceed than she is.

"Rox?" he says, quiet and uncertain.

"Eggsy?"

But there's nothing then except the ticking of her wristwatch and the warmth of his breath on her cheek, and maybe that's okay.


End file.
